Yik Yak is it going to be the next generation of Twitter?

Abstract: Editor's note: 36 Krypton Global exclusive interview with Yik Yak, a round of the global boss of the Chao (DCM co-founder and partner), although David himself is unwilling to Yik Yak B (the two days confirmed the Redwood's 62 million dollar) valuation revealed any number

Editor's note: 36 Krypton Global exclusive interview with Yik Yak, the world's boss of the global leader of the A-round of DCM (DCM co-founder and managing partner), although David himself would not have disclosed any data on the valuation of Yik Yak B (The 62 million U.S. dollar confirmed by the two-day Sequoia) Make any comments, but the DCM in the B round of the show that they are optimistic about the company's prospects, together to listen to his interpretation, it will be the next generation of Twitter?

To finalize a round deal in a burger shop.

You might not have imagined that David and Yik Yak, two co-founder Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington, hammered out a round greasy in the famous burger restaurant deal in California, where they spent 6 hours at the baseball stadium, and it was 10 o'clock in the evening. Hamburgers are the best food to eat as the restaurants in the street are closed. ”

Like many of the small business partners, Tyler and Brooks are quite complementary, David says, Tyler wants to be thoughtful, and Brooks is more outgoing, marketing-minded and a perfect candidate for marketing. Brooks usually throws out 4-5 ideas, and Taylor chooses 1-2 or two of them that are best suited to be considered.

Yik Yak's campus promotion activities are indeed creative, capricious and unrestrained. The typical example is they open in the campus big lie, the activity name is Ridethe yak-lets a dancer dress up as Yak (namely Yik Yak the logo yak) with the student straggly, unexpectedly also pulls a disorderly movement the machine yak to let everybody scramble for the ride, in short, high turned over.

In David's view, such a company from Atlanta rather than Silicon Valley is really rare, so, from the southeastern United States to the north to the West Coast, the first Yak all the way.

Everyone can see, anonymous social positive tuyere, it is not difficult to understand DCM also saw a lot of this product, but they feel secret, whisper information too negative energy, but encountered YikYak they feel that the user here PO content is very entertaining value.

It's a BBS, or a new generation of Twitter.

From the product form, Yik Yak is a 2500 meters within the range of anonymous BBS, no follow mechanism, text + map, users can 2500 meters within the range of other users published Yak, and it can be "top" or "step". Now that Yik Yak has been on fire in more than 1300 universities in the United States, David admits he didn't think the product was very work last year when the product came online. I checked its iteration record in the App Store, and the 1.3 release of February 3, 2014 only added back functionality, which is when Yak began to grow into a "group".

The reason for supporting text, David said, is to take into account the efficiency of early-stage content production, the picture is both cost and memory, in the future the product will have a richer media appearance.

In the early days, Yik Yak encountered a number of problems that many social networks had encountered, namely that the self-monitoring (self-police) mechanism was ineffective in the rare case of a user, and that many people would maliciously post negative content, such as the early Facebook screen, Twitter that supports individual follow is more straightforward. But as the community grows, users themselves know what to do and what not to do.

This is certainly related to the limitations of the team's products, in addition to the use of geo-fencing technology to prohibit primary and secondary school students using Yik Yak, the system will also filter out the real name, if one of your yak was trampled 5 times, then it automatically destroyed. Also, for non-local content, users have no right to comment, and the behavior of production information is tied to the current position. Unlike the traditional BBS, Yik Yak's content does not have a so-called "operation" at all.

However, a BBS fire so we still feel some incredible, the past 3 months its dau growth 10 times times, although David did not disclose to 36 Krypton Yik Yak user base. He believes that the mobile Internet in the golden age of anonymity, people do not want to be tracked, WeChat, Facebook are, and anonymous to the "Everyone equal the right to speak," it is hard to imagine such a platform will have a so-called Big V out, because you do not have an ID.

It's a cliché to say, but the equipment does change, information production and consumption gain a real character, and feedback has similar real time. Geo-fencing the former BBS from the topic-led information flow into a geographically oriented flow of information. In David's words, it's more like a new generation of broadcasts, rather than switching over each frequency, but shifting between different geographies, and Yik Yak's inline map feature also supports drop a pins, which can then view the flow of information here.

However, Yik Yak both in geo-fencing, or marketing to promote the emphasis on the university as a unit, which to a large extent to give the content greater controllability, high user density and more common, which will help information into the "flow."

In David's view, Yik Yak is the new Twitter if Snapchat is your Facebook. Snapchat is the genius of "Burn After reading" about Facebook's persistent information. Compared with the personal-centric information flow mechanism Twitter, Yik Yak as if Twitter, anonymity, and geo-fencing make it a new source of localized information.

In this also cross-country contrast, China also out several kinds of Yik Yak products, why did not do well? David said that their investment team also discussed the issue, he felt that China still has some mainstream BBS still very popular (I think there should be a bar), which I am more recognized. Another point is that "China's anonymity is not really anonymous", which I do not agree with, after all, domestic culture is not so sensitive to privacy. The further factor I have considered is that products and branding do not have a human soul, Yik Yak in a lot of detail and look at its rules:

The first one is "you don't bully or speciffically target other yakkers"

The second one is "you don't bully or speciffically target other yakkers"

The eagle-eyed classmate may have seen the lines of the movie "Fight Club" (the movie to find Freedom), and the marketing activities mentioned above have made young people capricious and unrestrained. to lbs anonymous social as the starting point, rethinking the user's mentality, the intention to make product adjustment I think is the Chinese products to do.

Where is Yik Yak's imagination? The charm of-hyper-local

Although David himself was unwilling to disclose any data on the Yik Yak valuation and to post any high or low comment, the latest round of DCM's talk shows that they are bullish on the company's prospects, before the WSJ informant said it had reached hundreds of millions of dollars.

Without any ID, no explicit profile (with a Me tab), it's hard to compare it with the precise targeting of Facebook, which often relies on advertising. But David doesn't think it's a big problem, because companies like Pepsi and Coca-Cola are already very valuable to the audience by narrowing the audience to the age of 18-25, and he thinks Facebook's advertising position doesn't work. David says Yik Yak will have a new data source later, but he can't say what the new product features.

In the more than 40-minute video interview, David highlighted the term "hyper-local", and David said that in the United States, hyper-local social networks and on-demand services are the current trends. Hyper local, means close enough to the user.

He argues that a hyper-localized social network can be a school, a business circle, and a residential community. But in any case, from the information dimension, Hyper Local information means that there can be ads for Hyper, in addition to brands like Coca-Cola, and David, for example, the pizza shop at Stanford can send a yak, "40 percent in the next 2 hours" This is a very powerful promotion. However, "We do not want to annoy people with ads, and they don't have ads for a long time, and so does Facebook." ”

If this is reminiscent of the "to shop pass" advertising mechanism is not moving, David said hyper-local service really touched me, he refers to the hyper-local service is on-demand services, we often say O2O, such as Uber, Instacart and so on. David admits that on-demand service will be combined with Yik Yak. Interestingly, DCM did cast a lot of hyper-local companies, such as Blued, 58 city, easy to use cars and so on.

But how to achieve it, I touched the next, this should be with Yik Yak map function of great relationship, on the map to call a car, find a restaurant, call a takeaway, buy a movie ticket such a service everyone should be no stranger. You may not be accustomed to the Baidu map, the gold map directly called services, but Yik Yak loyal users may not necessarily, this with the micro-letter in the micro-letter use of other services is a truth.

Asked what is the strategy for DCM in China and the United States in the big area of social networking? He answered only one sentence,

We are optimistic about video social, optimistic about anonymity, optimistic about hyper Local.